Info
Thank you for your interest in the Vivacitas roleplay server! It is our goal to provide a fun environment that fosters serious roleplay among players. Some general information about our server: *Our server host is JestServers *The server we currently rent is based in California *20 slots (it will be expanded depending on interest) *We use an application/whitelist process (apply at the thread on the official StarMade website) Further information about server rules, conventions, and gameplay modifications can be found below. To find out more about the lore of the Vivacitas universe, explore the various categories listed on the main page. Server News You can find the archive of server-related news on the Server News page. OOC updates and server information can be found there. Rules You must adhere to these rules if you would like to join. Failure to abide by them can result in a ban at an admin's discretion. *'Be respectful.' No excessive swearing in out of character OOC chat. The use of racial slurs will not be tolerated and will result in an immediate ban. *'Please have some kind of roleplay reason for attacking others.' Be it you're part of an opposing faction, pirate, or general scoundrel - try to make the RP engaging and fun. *'ONLY when a player is online' can you damage their property (structures, ships, etc). *'Stay in character IC.' Use asterisks or brackets for actions/emotes - example, *Varquynne sighs and gestures toward the airlock*. In character dialogue doesn't need to be enclosed by special characters, but please specify the range/recipient (e.g. broadcast, to Soandso *'Use double parentheses for OOC chat' - ((text)) - and try to limit it, especially in general chat. *'This is an RP server.' Powergaming is discouraged. Make the effort to interact with others, engage in creating stories. No metagaming - the knowledge YOU have is not necessarily the knowledge your character has. Simple example: I mention OOC that I'm building up a base in X, Y, Z sector. Your character doesn't suddenly have this knowledge. *'You must build a shipyard ''CONSTRUCTION AREA of equal or greater size to the ship you are trying to build before starting construction of said ship.' The exceptions to this rule are super light and light ship classes. See the ship classification chart below for standardized sizes. For example, if you have a shipyard construction area that is corvette sized, you cannot start constructing capital ships from it. Use ribbing/scaffolding similar to that seen in the right side of the following image: *'Do not shoot or push ships out of spawn or a protected sector.' *'Do not mine out planets or stations using the build block.' Conventions These conventions are in place to enhance the feel of the server and standardize certain references in-game. *'Ship classification:' **The accompanying chart will be used as the guideline to categorize ships. While going by strictly length is not perfect (nor is mass) for some designs, these will serve to get everyone on a similar page regarding the size class of their ships. *'Technology:' **Lunaris primarily uses ion engines. You can represent this by using ice crystal blocks for engine aesthetics. **Solaris primarily uses fusion-based technology. Fusion reactors can be constructed by encasing lava blocks within plex glass - it doesn't have to be large. **These conventions tie into the roleplay setting and allow easier identification of Lunaris vs. Solaris affiliation. Try your best to incorporate these into your designs if you can, but if there are particulars of your vision that make it difficult, it's not a huge deal. **Modules that are considered advanced technology are 0C Cloaker units, 10x Radar Jammers, and Bobby AI modules. The availability of these are limited in-game, and they can be quite the valuable find! *'Color scheme:' **Lunaris' primary color is '''blue'. White, grey, black are good complementary colors. Many of Lunaris' ship/structure designs lean heavily towards white as a base with blue highlights. **Solaris' primary color is red. White, grey, and black are also good complementary colors. Many of Solaris' ship/structure designs lean heavily towards black as a base with red highlights. **Take a look at some existing designs to get an idea of the general color balance. *'Roleplay' **Designate the proximity of your communications in your message. ***'General communications'. Example: "Radio Pirates spotted in sector 3, 2, 1!" Radio, broadcast, and distress messages can be heard by anyone that is monitoring those channels. ***'Encoded/private transmissions', such as those used by the military and private groups, are only heard by the parties/factions factions involved. Example: "command Convoy rendezvousing with the vessel Tranquility at sector 4, 3, 1." Another example: "Von Dougal > Jade Sky I cordially invite Shrike to dinner aboard my capital ship." ***'Local communications'. Messages labeled Local or without any designation whatsoever are only heard within a short proximity of players involved (i.e. face to face communications). **'Character death'. When your character dies, they respawn in one of their clones at a Plex Undeathinator. The character loses memory of the last 30 minutes of game time. The cost of the cloning process is 15% of your current amount of credits. **'Powergaming' ***From wikipedia: ****"Powergaming in roleplaying games can take several forms. One form is the deliberate creation of optimal player characters (PCs), with the aim of maximising the power the player wields in the game world by way of their avatar. This is known as min-maxing, due to the practice of balancing the PC's abilities through maximising desirable or "powerful" traits while minimising underpowered or unuseful traits. Such characters often draw criticism for not fitting the theme and tone of the game world or for being difficult to develop appropriate challenges for. Another form of power-gaming involves a focus on acquiring power during game progression, often by acquiring powerful equipment or unusual abilities. This lends itself to gameplay which is materialistic (and often, in the context of the game world, arguably amoral) and can frustrate other players who are looking to interact with the game world and the game story and not merely acquire loot." ****For StarMade in particular, this situation primarily arises when creating/designing ships. Packing the interior of your ship with cannons, power, shields without any consideration to the practicality of accessing areas for ship maintenance or simply moving about the ship is an example of powergaming. While ship designs may vary, most vessels (especially if they tend toward the larger side) need to have a cockpit or bridge, as well as some living quarters and access to engines/power supply. If your ship does not have these components, it simply does not fit the theme or tone of this roleplay server. ***From http://tsrp.wikia.com/: ****"Powergaming is when one character forces another character to do something that is either A) unreasonable or unrealistic by the very nature of the action, or B) an action which could reasonably be avoided by the character being acted upon. ****This particular situation principally arises in textual roleplay interaction with other players (i.e. not mediated though the gameplay mechanics of StarMade). Gameplay modifications *'Experimental power balance system': Once a player gains some experience with ship construction/design, it quickly becomes apparent that the parameters of the gameplay system in StarMade's alpha state allows one to create disproportionately powerful ships. This becomes painfully obvious when a player who has designed their ship to better fit the roleplay of the universe engages in combat with another player who put little to no emphasis on the roleplay practicalities of their ship. While there is something to be said about efficient ship design and quality, these type of combat match-ups are generally dissatisfying. In order to minimize this combat gap and improve the fun and duration of ship-to-ship combat, a power system is being developed and will be tested that will put an upper limit to the number of power blocks for a ship in a particular size class. More details will follow as the system receives more preliminary testing. *'Custom economy:' Item prices have been modified across the board. Standard hull and plex glass are drastically reduced in value. Ore prices have been modified to make refining higher to lower tier ores profitable. Plants have been increased in value to make harvesting them more worthwhile. *'Custom manufacturing:' Many items have been flagged so that they do not appear in recipes (e.g. rock, many plants, etc). Recipe purchase price has been set to 1500 units. Recipe buyback has been set to zero to combat credit exploits (it also seems to makes more sense). *'Item availability:' Certain items have been disabled for sale from shops (primarily advanced technology listed above). They can still be found (on pirate ships, issued through military channels, found on planetary stashes/ruins, etc), but their limited presence should make them quite valuable. *'Blueprint uploads disabled:' Until further customization of blueprint upload/use privileges are rolled out for StarMade during development, the catalog has been disabled. By all means, we encourage you to save your ship designs to your local catalogue for future use. You can, however, submit your designs (up to 3) to an admin for approval (at the admin's discretion) and spawning at government/black market shipyards. The reasons for disabling/limiting the catalog: **Combat blueprint-related exploits for credit/resource acquisition. **Reduce the instant warlord complex. We'd like to avoid players bringing in their super-dreadnaught from offline to completely annihilate the universe. **Reduce lag associated with some players wanting to spawn in mega ships **Foster the roleplay convention of shipyards (run by admins) **Encourage players to be more careful about whom they attack and whether they want to risk losing their ship *'Modified pirates:' Custom blueprints have been enabled for pirate use - be careful out in space! *'Speed cap of 75': Dog fights between pilots that know how to strafe can be quite drawn out. Even more so the higher the top speed of the vessels. The cap is set to improve combat balance. Category:Server